After I made numerous late-90s Switzerland trips, Paul enjoyed hearing my enthusiastic tales of the great German crooner Heino — reacting uproariously at my 1997 humor piece on this unique artist.

Before Germany gave us Devo progenitors Kraftwerk, before Teutonic pop goddess Nena sang of even a single Luftballoon – Yes, even before global media überstar David Hasselhof warbled a note – there was Heino (pronounced HIGH-no).    

Heinz Georg Kramm was born in 1938. He’s one of the most successful German musical artists ever. 

If you’ve traveled in western Europe and had the guts to channel-surf its cable TV, you’ve certainly encountered this quasi-albino folk crooner. Heino is a DNA cocktail made up of equal parts Edgar Winter and Engelbert Humperdink, with a sartorial nod to Roy Orbison thrown in for good measure.   

The Heino Mystique first took root during the 1960s. While American youths questioned authority — grooving en masse to the stylized lyrical protestations of Bob Dylan or Peter, Paul and Mary — the impossibly deep-throated Bavarian began cranking out album after album of more-or-less traditional folk music.  

Gracing the cover of each, to this day, is the unmistakable Heino fashion: turtlenecks and faux-leather coats made of vinyl and other flame-retardant materials. After three decades, a little extra girth is Heino’s only stylistic alteration to a Look that features a headful of hair so white-blonde it could not possibly occur in nature, Orbison-esque rectangular shades designed by somebody who later scored big off Harry Caray, and tight peg pants that don’t really improve matters all that much.

Fifty million Heino fans can’t be wrong. 

OK, well, he’s no Elvis Presley, but he’s Big In Gemany and his inevitable rise to stateside cult status is imminent. Like Slim Whitman or Boxcar Willie – whose erstwhile fame here first began “over there,” Heino’s American moment is nigh.   

His musical genre, known in Germanic Europe alternately as either “Lieder” (literally, “songs”) or “Schlager” (“hits”), is an unpardonable cross between country, polka and The Ray Conniff Players. Basic Schlager employs accordian, keyboards, brass and pedal steel, and in Heino’s case, we hear vocal and synthesized overdubs, elaborate string arrangements and pre-recorded children’s choruses.

The overall effect is numbingly cheerful, as evidenced on any of Heino’s dozen-plus Christmas albums (he is only slightly less prolific a musician than Elvis Costello).

But Heino is more than just an aural performer. He is a visual stunner, plain to any rightminded traveler who’s ever been stopped dead in his tracks holding a remote control in a European hotel room. (Heino dons sunglasses 24/7/365 owing to Grave’s disease, a condition causing the eyeballs to bulge.)

Heino: love child of John Denver and “Dieter?”

His widest-reaching medium is the ubiquitous Schlager television programming, which includes Bierhall sets where the studio audience members, often dressed in traditional lederhosen, sing along, swinging steins of bier and swaying in time on benches along rows of long wooden tables. 

Schlager TV makes American country television line-dancing seem streetwise.

Then there’s That Voice. 

The Heino baritone is simply so low you can’t imagine why its single-monikered owner wouldn’t instead have parlayed his gift into a lucrative career in voiceovers for Germany’s cable news network (“This… is Deutsche Rundfunk“).

Video jocks on VIVA, Europe’s “other” MTV, regularly invoke irreverent references to the Wagnerian bleached blonde. Heino is a recurring guest on German television’s blatant knock-off of The Late Show with David Letterman, “Die Harald Schmidt Show,” which features sets, a chatty bandleader – named Helmut rather than Paul – and even an opening sequence so eerily similar to Dave’s that you’d swear you landed in an episode of The Twilight Zone (dubbed). 

Back on our side of the pond, Heino is slowly beginning to attract attention as a pop culture conversation piece.  Fan sites have begun appearing on the web.  Right now, Comedy Central’s “Daily Show” is investigating Heino coverage, and there’s room for him as well on the real “Late Show”, in Dave’s Record Collection. 

Already in possession of two things every celebrity needs – a Look and a Mystique – the only thing remaining between Heino and household familiarity here is a record-offer of some recorded American tunes during late-night airtime on TBS. Hey, it worked for Zamfir.